Editorial: Paint companies try to pull fast one on Sacramento

A San Francisco property subject to a lead paint enforcement action in 2013.

Photo: Rohan Smith / The Chronicle

Less than two months after lead paint makers withdrew an attempt to hoodwink California voters into reversing a court ruling against them and paying the bill themselves, nascent legislation on the issue has been in the works. If it amounts to another effort to undo the companies’ court-ordered responsibility for a toxic product still afflicting the state’s cities, it deserves to go the way of the last maneuver.

The proposals being discussed wouldn’t go as far as the ballot measure, but they could limit and dilute the companies’ liability under a 2014 judgment in Santa Clara County. To what extent isn’t clear because with only a week left in the legislative session, no bill language has surfaced.

That in itself is another reason for consternation. At this point, any legislation would have to be rushed into law with no opportunity for careful review or revision. That’s no way to handle any bill, let alone one addressing a complex topic that has been the subject of a legal dispute lasting nearly two decades.

Having fought and lost a court battle with Santa Clara County and other local governments, a trio of paint manufacturers and their corporate successors threatened to mount the ballot measure, which would have overturned the court’s conclusion and forced taxpayers to borrow billions of dollars to clean up their mess and other, unrelated hazards.

Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, and other lawmakers responded with a series of bills backing up the court and imposing further obligations on the paint makers. Two of the companies expended a combined $2 million lobbying the Legislature in the second quarter of this year, ranking them among the top spenders. They and legislators reached a cease-fire in June, when both the ballot measure and the bills were dropped.

Santa Clara County sued former lead paint manufacturers in 2000 on the grounds that they promoted lead paint despite its dangers; it was joined by nine other local governments, including San Francisco, Oakland, and San Mateo and Alameda counties. Fourteen years later, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge issued the landmark ruling that Sherwin-Williams, Conagra and NL Industries had created a public nuisance and held them liable to find and fix lead hazards. A state appellate court upheld the judgment subject to additional limits. The state Supreme Court declined to hear the case in February, and the companies appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court last month.

Lead was widely used in paint and remains common in housing predating a 1978 ban. Lead-based paint becomes dangerous when wear and tear produce lead-laden dust, the ingestion of which is the chief cause of childhood lead poisoning.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez said she is open to lead paint legislation as long as it doesn’t reverse the companies’ liability. “My concern is that they don’t evade their responsibility anymore,” she said.

A comprehensive response to paint hazards that meets that standard would be worth pursuing. But a proposal that has yet to become public with just days of legislating left is unlikely to yield such a result.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.